fast and curious

March 2014

I’m a mid-thirties programmer of average fitness -- which means I’m as fit as a 65-year-old marketer (or our CEO in his 90s). As a business traveller, I also spend a lot of time in hotels. It’s hard to stay fit on the road! Far from your gym and your kitchen, it’s easy for hard-won good habits go out the window.

Lora’s 15-Minute Full-Body Workout Routine looked like a great match: it’s a workout you can do in a hotel room, without needing any weights or machines. You just need some clothes you can get sweaty in, and a chair for tricep dips. I ended up running through it in the hotel fitness center, next to other business travellers sweating on the ellipticals.

The workout starts out with figure-8s; I used an 8-pound medicine ball (a mistake! My neck and shoulders complained enough that I dropped to 4 pounds afterwards). After that it was squats, the shoulder-touch plank (ouch), tricep dips, and toe-touches. The first set wasn’t bad -- though I was definitely breathing hard -- but by the second set I was sweating and cursing the hotel’s breakfast buffet. The third set was ragged, and afterwards I lay on the fitness room floor for a little while and just recovered.

Lora kindly explained that it’s okay to take a 1-minute rest between sets if you need to. Every time through the workout, you should aim to rest less. That’s what makes it such a good workout in such a short time: you keep pressing hard, and your body will rise to the challenge.

I’ll keep that in mind for tomorrow when I try again. This time with less breakfast pancakes first!

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Brace yourself...hummus is taking this country by storm, one food blog at a time. For centuries hummus has been a staple in Middle Eastern cuisine, and now the rest of the world is getting in on the delicious trend.

This weekend, I jumped on the hummus bandwagon and finally learned how to make some myself.

After picking up a couple ingredients from the local store, I was ready to go. While I’m normally hesitant to make anything more complicated than toast, this recipe was simple, tasty, and only took about 5 minutes to make!

Tips & Tricks:

If you don’t have a food processor, try a blender instead. I used a magic bullet and the hummus turned out great.

Like Blanche suggests, adjust the ingredients until you find a recipe you love. I liked mine with a little extra garlic!

Spice up traditional hummus by adding in different ingredients. Use red peppers to add a little kick, or avocado to make it extra smooth.

Hummus is much more than just a dip - try it as a sandwich spread, or as an alternative to cream cheese or butter

Blanche's homemade hummus was such a hit with my roommates, we even ate it for breakfast the next morning.

If you’re like me, you celebrate St. Patrick’s Day with friends, a few pints, and all the green clothing you own. I don’t think I ever actually stopped to think that Saint Patrick was a real person--let alone who he actually was. Jeremiah Warren painted a picture (an animated one at that) of Saint Patrick. There were findings here that turned my view of St. Patty’s Day upside down.

First off, he wasn’t named Patrick! I’m metaphorically dropping the mic. Earth-shattering. Turns out his real name was Maewyn. Saint Maewyn’s Day doesn’t have the same ring to it so thanks to him for changing his name to Patrecius and someone else for making that Patrick. No need to thank the person who changed Patrick to Patty’s, they were just being lazy.

In all seriousness Saint Patrick sounds like an amazing person. He must have been a very convincing pitchman to convert so many Irish to Christianity and I was blown away by his compassion for his former slave master. I wish that story could have ended with less fire and more handshakes.

In the spirit of St. Patty’s Day, my colleague Maggie baked some green cupcakes. Despite winning the Curious holiday party dessert competition--the single greatest baking achievement of my lifetime--I’ll be enjoying these delicious treats courtesy of her. However you celebrate this year, Happy Saint Maewyn’s Day!

After years of wearing its shape into my back pockets, my “genuine leather” wallet finally started to come apart at the seams. First in the billfold, now in the credit card holder. So it was with some reluctance that I started in on this week’s Curious 52 challenge—to replace my trusty old friend with a new duct tape carry-all.

The sentiment faded fast as I started to get excited about my new accessory. I started by making some customizations to make sure that my wallet would fit my back pocket. I like to fold my bills; it’s a small price to pay to keep my wallet snug in a pocket and out of view.

From there it was a simple process of measuring pieces of tape and sticking them together. In minutes I had formed my billfold and was moving onto my credit card holder.

When I grabbed my tape to start assembling the accordion pocket, I was disappointed to find that I had hit the end of my roll. Luckily I had already assembled something with more room and functionality than my old wallet.

Tips:

Start with a fresh roll of tape!

Try using a roll of checkerboard tape. It looks pretty cool and eliminates the need for a ruler (just count the squares).

When you stick two pieces of tape together, make sure they’re totally lined up! It’s hard to pull them apart.

For this week’s Curious 52 Challenge, I learned how to repair a hole in my jeans. Because my jean collection is actually in good shape, I put out an office-wide call to see if any Curious employees needed theirs stitched up.

Kristen brought in her favorite pair of jeans from college, and to work I went.

Although Professor Pincushion’s lesson uses a sewing machine for the zigzag stitch, I decided to sew by hand - like many of you may. To adapt the stitch, I rewatched the “Sewing” section a couple times to figure out the anatomy of the stitch.

It was simple to recreate -- just think of the machine zigzag stitch as the “perfect” version of what you can do by hand.

Remember - denim is pretty forgiving. Don’t be afraid to make some small mistakes!

Here I am in the Curious lounge, using the Curious iOS app throughout my project.

To set up, I threaded my needle, and knotted it at the end. I started off my row by threading the needle through the inside of the pant leg, so the tied end was hidden. Then I zigzagged away!

Tips for all you hand-sewers:

Be careful that your fabric scrap doesn’t double under while you’re sewing, so you accidentally stitch through 3 layers instead of two. This happened to me!

Make sure that when you’re pulling the needle through, your excess thread doesn’t get knotted on itself - I encountered this issue more than once and had to start all over

Handle the edges of the hole delicately - if you don’t, the fabric may fray further and make your hole bigger

The finished product.

A close-up.

This challenge rekindled my love for sewing - I haven’t had a needle in hand since 3rd grade! Maybe a sewing machine purchase is in my future.